


Snowflakes

by Nyxelestia



Series: Winter Wolves [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Color Blind Steve Rogers, Color Blindness, Deleted Scenes, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Mental Health Issues, Money, Multi, One Shot, PTSD, Reference to Sexism, Roscoe the Jeep, Sexism, Sexual Abuse, Social Anxiety, Stilinski Family Feels, Violence, Warning: Kate Argent, Werewolf Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-08 16:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5504363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various outsider POV and missing scenes from Frostbite.</p><p><b>Ch. 1: Roscoe</b> - Steve and the Sheriff talk about Stiles' Jeep, and family.<br/><b>Ch. 2: Bruce Banner and the Baby Banshee</b> - Lydia gets a gift from Dr. Banner.<br/><b>Ch. 3: The Night Before</b> - Steve and Tony chat the night before Steve first arrived in Beacon Hills.<br/><b>Ch. 4: He'd Be Perfect</b> - Scott's fanboying over the Black Widow left an impression on Kate.<br/><b>Ch. 5: Blood as Red as Mud</b> - Steve used to be colorblind, too.<br/><b>Ch. 6: In a Window Back Home</b> - Families of the falling, and the fallen.<br/><b>Ch. 7: Nightmare Fuel</b> - Derek has a <i>very</i> bad dream while waiting for Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roscoe

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of scenes and POV's that won't make it into the main stories. You do not need to read any of these to be able to understand Frost Bite or Talking Cure, but you will get more out of those stories if you do.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and the Sheriff talk about Stiles' Jeep, and family. After all, Stiles is the only family either of them really have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Frost Bite, Chapter 1, the Sheriff mentioned serving in the Army after having met Claudia, but that would conflict with this one-shot. So either he actually served before he met her, or he left the police for a while to serve in the Army. Not gonna pick one just yet, though - any preferences, headcanons, or other thoughts? :)

~*~

The evening after Steve left, John was at home. Watching a basketball game, he was enjoying a bag of chips Stiles didn’t know about whilst the mother-hen in question was at Scott’s. The boys were ostensibly working on a school project, but Scott had video games and Melissa had the night shift.

When John’s cell-phone rang, it wasn’t any of the work-related ringtones. The Caller ID still surprised him as he answered it.

“Hello?” John answered. “Steve?”

“Hello, Sheriff,” Steve said.

“Did you forget something?” John asked. “I can look-”

“No,” Steve said, and then remained silent.

John knew that silence.

“Everything okay, Steve?” he asked, leaning back in his recliner.

“Yeah,” Steve said. "Yeah..."

Steve hadn’t sounded this nervous since the day he first showed up on their doorstep.

The lost expression on Steve’s face that night had been the biggest reason why John hadn’t recognized him as Captain America.

“Is Stiles there?” Steve asked.

“No,” John said, frowning. “He’s at Scott’s. Isn’t he answering his phone?”

“It’s not that,” Steve said hurriedly. “I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t around in case…are you still getting him a car for his sixteenth birthday?”

John blinked in surprise, no longer even seeing the TV screen as he tried to process the abrupt change in direction.

“That’s one hell of a non-sequitur,” he said carefully.

“I know,” Steve said. “But - are you?”

“Probably,” John said. Where was Steve going with this? “We have enough money for some of the other cars available.”

“Are you going to take him to Keller’s lot? On his birthday?” Steve asked in the voice of someone looking for a particular answer.

Narrowing his eyes at the toothpaste commercial on TV, John asked, “What’s this about, Steve?”

“Umm…” And wasn’t that something he’d heard a million times before? For a split second, John couldn’t help but imagine Steve biting his lip and shifting his weight the way Stiles did when he knew he was in trouble. “I may have detoured to Keller’s on my way out of town?”

John had a feeling he knew where this was going.

He opened his mouth, then closed it, opting to let the silence do the interrogating for him.

But Steve also knew a thing or two about interrogations. Instead of explaining himself, he said, “You should take him there on his birthday.”

“Steeeeve,” John said, drawing out the man’s name in a way typically only reserved for trouble-makers of the young and stupid variety. “What did you do?”

“Stiles told me about not having enough money for Claudia’s jeep,” Steve said.

John started to smile. “So you covered the gap?”

“Uhh…”

“Steve?”

“A bit more than that.”

John’s smile froze. “How much more?”

“…the whole thing?”

The crinkling and crunching of John’s illicit bag of chips dropping onto the floor sounded a lot like how he felt.

“What do you mean, ‘the whole thing’?!” John demanded. “You mean the ‘thing’ being Stiles’ half, right?” Please, please don't say-

“I mean the sticker price,” Steve said. “The whole thing.”

John stared down at where the bag of chips was leaning down, dangerously close to toppling over outright. “How can - Steve, that’s…” He took a deep, composing breath. “That’s an awful lot of money, Steve.”

“Captain America gets paid an awful lot of money,” Steve drawled. “Not to mention some serious back-pay.”

“Back pay?” John asked, bewildered.

“M-I-A pay. From the date I went missing to the official end of my original army contract is about a year and a half. So that much in captain’s pay, adjusted for inflation and invested in savings bond as some PR move someone did a few decades ago. Plus a bunch of savings bonds I’d bought back in the day,” Steve added. “It’s…well, a lot.”

John’s throat went dry as he tried to wrap his mind around that.

“All of that’s on top of what I get paid today,” Steve added. “And I’m not - my ma and Bucky's ma both raised me to be frugal, so I don’t really spend much on myself.

“That’s…” John shook his head even though Steve couldn’t see him. “Let me pay you back-”

“No,” Steve said. “I didn’t mean this as a loan, I meant it as a gift.”

“Steve-”

“I told Mr. Keller to tell Stiles it’s a gift from his Grand Uncle Bucky.”

“…‘Grand Uncle Bucky’?” John asked incredulously.

Steve hummed an affirmative. “If Bucky’s had even half the kind of money I have, now, he would’ve done the same.”

“We already have most of it,” John argued again. “We don’t take charity.”

“This isn’t charity,” Steve said. “This is-”

He stopped.

“What, Steve?” John demanded. “This is what?”

He heard a few deep, bracing breaths.

“I know you don’t think of me the same way,” Steve said. “But you two really are the closest thing to family I’ve got.”

There were so many things he could say to that. First and foremost being _I kind of figured that since you named a teenager your N-O-K_ , but that seemed too tactless. There was also _I’m honored_ , which was true, but even to John’s ear that sounded farcical - and he was pretty sure Steve’s threshold for that was even lower than his own.

Luckily, Steve kept talking.

“I’ve been effectively dead for seventy years,” Steve said “And yet I’m back, now. All the people I considered family are dead, and the only woman I ever wanted to start my own family with is almost dead, too. I”

The forced silence was a familiar one.

“Stiles is all you have left,” John said. It was a feeling John knew well - after all, Stiles was all _he_ had left, too.

“Yes,” Steve admitted. “So please - let me do this?”

God damn it.

It wasn’t just a please, it was _that_ kind of please, the one which John could never seem to resist - the kind that filled and broke his heart at the same time.

Steve wasn’t even technically related to them, yet John could suddenly see where Claudia and Stiles got it from.

Maybe Steve got it from the same place.

“…I can put my half into his college fund,” John relented.

Steve’s sigh of relief damn near broke his heart.

“Thank you,” Steve said quietly.

John huffed in bemusement. “Pretty sure I should be thanking you.”

“Maybe,” Steve said. “I may not have even met her, but Claudia was still Bucky’s niece - and the way we were, that kind of makes me think of her as _my_ niece, too. And Stiles was so dedicated, it would’ve felt wrong for him not to inherit her car.”

John breathed out through his nose, feeling his heart deflate at the reminder of his wife. “As long as he doesn’t inherit her driving skills,” he said.

Steve chuckled. “Stiles mentioned. A bit of a reckless driver?”

“That might be understating it, but yes,” John said. “The only reason I didn’t complain about it more is because it was how we met.”

“How?”

“Speeding ticket,” John said. “I pulled her over for speeding and she tried to flirt her way out of the ticket.”

Steve laughed. “Did it work?”

“No,” John said, smiling in reminiscence. “She came to the station and paid for the whole damn thing in origami singles. I had to unfold them all one-by-one.”

“Well, at least Stiles can use his half of the money to pay off his speeding tickets.”

John groaned, slumping into his seat. “Goddamnit, Steve, don’t encourage him!”

“If Bucky’s driving was anything to go by, I won’t need to,” Steve said. John groaned even more at the thought of Claudia’s driving being _hereditary_ , and Steve continued to laugh at John’s misery. “Granted, it came in handy during the war.”

“But Stiles isn’t going to war,” John said. “If I have my way, he’ll never be in any kind of war whatsoever.”

“He probably wouldn’t be suited for army life,” Steve agreed.

John tried to imagine Stiles as a soldier, and grinned at the thought. “If he tried to enlist, he’d get chaptered back out in a week for his smart mouth.”

Steve snorted.

For a few moments, there was a comfortable silence. John winced at the score of the game on TV, though at least it looked like the tide was turning.

“I’ll take him,” Jon said. “On his birthday. I’ll tell him we’re just going to get him some other car instead of his mom’s jeep.”

“Thank you,” Steve said.

“You too,” John replied.

Neither of them said another word as they ended the call.

A car.

A whole, damn car.

He wondered what Claudia would’ve thought about this.

On a whim, John got up and went to his office, digging and digging through his mess until he pulled the picture frame from the bottom of its drawer.

His first anniversary present to her. After all, the traditional first anniversary present was supposed to be paper.

The frame itself was elegant, sweet and severe in a way that left it perfectly at odds with the speeding ticket it framed. John had spent two weeks finding a shade of wood that complemented the ink of his department’s pens and her shade of lipstick.

After the ticket and payment had finally been processed, John had expected her to leave and to never see her again, or only in passing at most. He’d figured all her flirting had just been to get out of paying the ticket, an attempt to save herself some money and trouble, nothing more.

He’d given the ticket to her with a quip about keeping an eye on her speedometer in the future.

Snatching a pen off of John’s desk, she’d written her phone number across the bottom of the ticket, kissed the corner, and handed it right back to John. Without a word, she’d winked at him and sauntered out, leaving John staring out the door after her. He’d been so stunned that even a year later, at their wedding, Deputy Donati dedicated half his toast to describing his face for Claudia’s benefit.

He heard the front door opening downstairs, followed by the comforting sounds of Stiles dumping his bag onto the couch as he went to open the garage and pull his bike in.

With a soft smile, John pressed his lips against the corner of the frame, before putting it back in its drawer.

~*~

That week, he picked up a few extra shifts at the station. He did so under the guise of ensuring he had the day off on Stiles’ birthday. The pathetic reality, though, was that avoiding Stiles was the only way John could keep himself from spilling the surprise too early.

Thank god Stiles’ birthday was on Saturday. When the day actually came, Scott and Melissa were there in the morning with cake. Stiles got some typical presents. A video game from Scott, some new headphones from Melissa, and John got him some more comic books.

After the McCalls had gone to their respective jobs, John talked Stiles into going to the car lot. Stiles’ eyes were dim as he relented, and it almost killed John not to say anything.

When they got to the lot, Stiles was literally trudging in. As they walked in, they veered towards the jeeps, SUVs, and all-terrain vehicles section out of habit. They were in sight of the jeep when Stiles froze, likely remembering that he wasn’t able to afford it.

Thankfully, that’s when Keller came out.

“There you are!” the old man called, already smiling.

“Hi, Mr. Keller,” Stiles said with a dull voice, and a brave face nonetheless.

As the old car dealer approached, he held up a clipboard with a sheaf of papers in it and a set of keys for the jeep. “I was wondering when you were coming to pick her up.” Stiles opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Keller shoved the clipboard and a pen at Stiles. “Payment’s already gone through, so you and your dad just need to sign the highlighted bits and your ma’s jeep is all yours.”

“Payment?” Stiles asked, bewildered and clutching the clipboard in a white-knuckled grip. He stared at it like it was written in some arcane language he had to decipher.

“The jeep is a gift,” Keller said. “From your grand-uncle Bucky.”

“My-?!”

Stiles stared at him, glanced at John, then did a double-take when he noticed John’s big, shit-eating grin.

Stiles narrowed his eyes, and John could see the cogs turning in his head as he put the pieces together.

“Steve?” he asked.

John nodded. “Steve,” he confirmed.

Staring between Keller, John, and the jeep, Stiles clutched the clipboard to his chest in some combination of shock and who knows how many other feelings.

Finally, Stiles tucked the clipboard under his arm as he pulled his phone out from his pocket and started tapping at it, before putting it to his ear. John didn’t need to look at the screen to know who Stiles was calling.

From Stiles' posture alone, he knew the moment Steve answered the call.

“GRAND UNCLE BUCKY?!” Stiles shouted into the phone. “ _GRAND UNCLE BUCKY?!_ ”

John and Keller doubled over themselves laughing at Stiles’ outrage. For just a moment, John could swear he heard Claudia laughing somewhere in the distance.

He hoped her Uncle Bucky was laughing with her.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Donovan's last name was Donati - making Deputy Donati his father.


	2. Bruce Banner and the Baby Banshee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia gets a gift from Dr. Banner. He knows what it's like wake up naked a long time and a lot of distance away from what you last remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place around Chapter 4 of both **Frost Bite** and **Talking Cure** (the paraquel/sequel to Frost Bite I will begin posting soon, since waiting until Frost Bite is done will no longer work).

~*~

"It's not like I killed someone," Lydia told Allison, right before walking into a crowd of students all staring at her like she had killed someone.

Lydia could feel Allison fidgeting beside her, and saw how some students glanced nervously at her, too. Right - Allison's crazy aunt.

Well, it would take more than a mental break and some nude hiking to bring her down. And like hell she would let anyone give _Allison_ hell for something so completely beyond her control.

Flipping her hair, she started sauntering towards her locker, knowing Allison would follow her. It didn't take long for the student body to start moving again, for people to start focusing on their own problems and own lives. Two hallways down, and she and Allison were just two more students rushing to get their stuff together before classes started.

"...I think I liked being the 'new girl' better," Allison muttered. She and Lydia approached the last turn into the hallway their lockers were in.

"Give it a few weeks," Lydia dismissed, with a flippant wave of her hand. "And everyone will forget all about this. We just had a...bad week."

"My aunt murdered over a dozen people," Allison said. "That's a bit more than a 'bad week'."

Her wavering voice made Lydia stop and turn around, just in time to see Allison duck her head. Around Allison, Lydia could see Harley and Anna standing by their lockers. They were looking at something on their phones and glancing at Allison with open derision.

Didn't take a genius to figure out what they were looking at.

"Your aunt did," Lydia agreed neutrally. "But _you_ didn't. Anyone who thinks you had anything to do with her is an idiot. I'm not sure if you noticed, Allison, but I do not tolerate idiots for long."

Allison smiled, her expression looking about as brittle as Lydia felt. Lydia grabbed Allison's hand and tugged her down the hall, weaving between students trying to avoid them, and around the last corner.

Helping others was a good way to help yourself.

Lydia faltered when she saw Stiles, but continued without losing her stride. Allison sped up slightly, since Scott stood beside Stiles.

"Hey," both boys greeted in unison. Scott immediately wrapped Allison in a tight hug. Lydia let go of Allison's hand to let her hug back, and stepped around the happy-sappy couple to get to her locker.

"How're you feeling?" Stiles asked her, moving back a pace so she could reach her locker.

"Fine," Lydia said, with another flip of her hair to keep it in its place - and distract him from scrutinizing her face. She kept her voice as nonchalant as possible as she started turning the dial on her lock. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You've had a rough week," Stiles pointed out. Lydia pursed her lips and didn't respond, opening her locker instead. She fished out her history notebook, and the AP book the teacher was smart enough to use in place of the textbook. Stiles sighed, and pulled off his backpack. Unzipping it, he said, "I got something for you."

Setting her make-up bag inside her locker, Lydia turned to him and said with absolute neutrality, "Oh?"

She expected him to pull out some flowers or candy, things boys normally bought for girls. Maybe a book, since Stiles was a little more self-aware than most.

As such, she was honestly surprised when he pulled out a folio instead. It was plain black leather with brass corners, with a little StarkIndustries logo debossed at the bottom of the back-cover. He turned it to hand it to her, and she saw Lydia Martin embossed on the front in large, golden Times New Roman letters.

Handing it to her, he said, "Please don't ask how I got this. I remembered what you said about Dr. Banner at the dance, so while you were in the hospital... Well, I know someone who knows someone."

Setting down her book and notebook in her locker, she took the folio and opened it, keeping her face impassive. She took in the cover page of the article on gamma radiation and cellular structure she first saw when poking through her mom's biology journals as a kid. She flipped the page, about to start reading the academic smackdown of the scientist who Mom hated because he always had to be 'reminded' to address women by 'doctor' instead of 'Miss'.

Then she saw the note on the back of the cover page.

_Ms. Martin,_ it read, in blocky handwriting. _I know a thing or two about waking up in a lot less clothes than you last remember, days and miles away from where you started. You must be scared, right now, and I know this because I am, too - every time it happens to me. I hope you never have to go through something like this again. But if you do, just remember that if you are reading this, then you've already pulled through the hardest part. No matter how tempting it is, don't give up, don't run away from your family, and don't hide from your friends. You deserve better than that, and you can make yourself better than that. I believe in you, Lydia._

Underneath it was a messy signature. Beneath that, in the same handwriting as the note, it said, _Dr. Bruce Banner_.

"...take your picture?"

Lydia blinked and looked up to see Stiles holding up his phone.

"Just - so I can send it back, show them I gave it to you," Stiles said, looking hopeful. "And that you liked it. You can delete it off my phone right after if you want, promise."

It took Lydia a moment to realize she was smiling.

"Yes," she said absently, already turning her attention back to the article. She didn't even register the artificial shutter sound of Stiles' phone taking a picture of her as she re-read the note. He started tapping away at the phone as she read the first paragraph of the article. It had lit a fire under her soul when she was still in elementary school and needed her mom to explain half the words for her. After a minute - and another turned page - she waved Stiles off when he offered her his phone, instead zeroing in on more of that blocky handwriting, smaller and a little bit slanted, on the margin.

_I had to rewrite this line a dozen times,_ it said, an arrow pointing towards the beginning of a very long sentence. On the other side and lower down, there was an amused sounding, _This part of the experiment was when I realized just how much paperwork an army-funded experiment meant._ She started flipping through the pages to see dozens more, margins filled with notes and commentary, parts of the article underlined and highlighted, and even a doodle of what she was sure was the Hulk jumping over one of the graphs in the article.

"Lydia?" a voice asked, cutting into her reverie. Allison's voice.

At the same time, she heard Stiles saying, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, this was supposed to cheer you up!"

Lydia looked up to see Stiles looking stricken and bewildered in equal measures, as Scott and Allison bore matching looks of concern.

Allison reached into her bag and pulled out one of the cotton rounds she used to fix her make-up. She handed it to Lydia, saying, "You're crying."

Clutching the folio to her chest, Lydia turned to face the mirror she had on the inside door of her locker. Indeed, she had some tears running down her cheeks. In the corner of her eye, she could see that there was a growing gap around the four of them, with students side-eyeing them as they walked past.

Lydia didn't even care, anymore.

Gently closing the folio and setting it down in her locker, she turned to Scott, Stiles, and Allison. "Happy tears," she reassured them. She turned back to her mirror, wiping them away and reaching for her make-up bag. At least her mascara held, so she just had to fix the foundation and un-smudge the eyeliner.

Soon, her face was back to normal, all evidence of her latest mental cracks gone. Lydia packed up her make-up bag again and set it on the little shelf inside her locker. She grabbed her history book, her notebook, and her pencil satchel. After a moment's hesitation, she picked up the leather folio, too. She slipped it between the notebook and the AP textbook, keeping it as safe as possible, and shut her locker door.

Taking a deep breath as she put the lock back in place, she turned to the increasingly mysterious boy beside her.

"Thank you, Stiles," she said. She bit down on her request to know how he got this - who the hell could he possibly know that would know Dr. Banner? Getting an autograph from Dr. Banner alone was bizarre enough. What could Stiles have done to get Dr. Banner to dedicate all that time to write the commentary and message just for her? And what about the portfolio holding it? She could feel the quality of the leather, well beyond anything the son of a cop could afford. Not to mention the customization of her name on the front. God, she wanted to know so bad. But the gift was amazing enough that she could do nothing but honor Stiles' request not to ask him about it. Instead, she said, "I love it." For once, she actually meant it.

Stiles grinned, open and heartfelt enough to give Allison and Scott a run for their money. "I'm glad to hear it."

The warning bell rang, saving her from having to say anything else. Instead, she grabbed Allison's hand again, since the Honors English class was right down the hall from Lydia's AP history class. Lydia pulled her away, Allison waving over her shoulder at the boys.

"What did he get you?" Allison asked.

"An article by one of my favorite research scientists," Lydia said. "Autographed and notated by him."

Allison smiled. Her lack of academic understanding didn't impede her emotional intelligence in the slightest. "That's great!"

Biting her lip, Lydia stopped outside Allison's classroom to show her the note. Allison read it quickly, her face softening with every word, until she handed it back to Lydia with another hug.

"He's right, you know," Allison said into Lydia's ear. "You'll pull through."

"You too," Lydia said, pulling back so she could make it to her own class. "If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, point them my way. I'll make them regret it."

Allison nodded, her smile looking a lot stronger than it did twenty minutes ago. "See you in chemistry?"

"It's a date," Lydia promised. She turned and made her way to her own class with a bounce in her step that made her feel taller than even her highest heels could manage.

Not even the sight of Jackson coming down the hall was enough to bring her down. She briefly considered confronting him - she had a few minutes before the starting bell rang, she could do it.

But the jackass broke up with her over _text_. Coward.

Pulling her book, notebook, and folio to her side, she gave Jackson her sharpest grin as she walked right past him, and into her classroom. Taking her usual seat, she pulled open the folio and flipped over to the second page, where the first marginal commentary was waiting for her.

There was only one man whose written word she was going to value, today, and it sure as hell wasn't Jackson.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Jackson fans, I've got plans for his character. He's not going to remain the resident jackass for long. He'll redeem himself...eventually. ;)


	3. The Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Tony chat the night before Steve first arrived in Beacon Hills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Response to a prompt from [this writing/project meme](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/145632843635/no-excuses-writing-meme-askbox-version) asking for something taking place 'before the beginning' of a current project/fanfic. The next update is being stubborn with me, so you guys get this to tide you over. :)

~*~

Steve didn't blame Tony for his paranoia, his fears of losing the Avengers. As irritating as Tony's demands for updates and check-ins occasionally got, Steve couldn't find it in himself to genuinely resent his regular phone calls to Tony.

They were their own brand of soothing. Tony wanted the call mostly to hear Steve's voice and check that it was actually him. After, he mostly just wanted someone to talk at, and didn't seem to mind that Steve wasn't really listening to him. Steve often donned his headset or put his phone on speaker and set it aside, letting Tony's chattering wash all over him as he sketched a bit before bed.

It reminded him of late nights spent lurking in the quieter corners of whatever basement Howard had commandeered during the war. Steve had spent many a restless night doodling, finishing paperwork, or reading while Howard spoke in grumbling math and excited scientific jargon that rarely even sounded like English to Steve's untrained ears. Sometimes, if there was a couch, Steve would even doze or nap in there, listening to the genius inventor and his team of other geniuses as they worked deep into the night, the gentle cacophony lulling Steve to sleep.

Steve knew better than to mention or admit this to Tony, but he took what little comforts he could when he found them.

"...so Dummy has lost his fire-extinguisher privileges. Again," Tony said, concluding a story about some new joint mechanism for his latest suit. "But on the bright side, I actually got some ideas for on-board dispersal-based weapons. I wouldn't be able to carry any kind of fire-suppressants on me, but maybe if I integrated the repulsor with an aeration system, I might be able to help put out fires and shit when I'm Iron Man."

"That would be useful," Steve interjected distractedly, squinting at the boxy lamp in his motel room as he tried to draw it. Still-life drawings were not his forte in the slightest, which is why he did so many of them - he needed the practice.

Tony sighed. "That's a while off, yet. Maybe a project for next week, since tomorrow I have to fly out to Colorado and Detroit to evaluate some properties for factory investment."

"Sounds...interesting," Steve said, to which Tony snorted. "Why Detroit?"

"That city went to shit a few decades after you went down in the ice," Tony said. "And never bounced back."

The other reason Steve appreciated this phone-calls was Tony's refusal to be gentle about Steve's history. He was neither cruel nor excessive about it, but he didn't walk around Steve on egg-shells or try to sugarcoat anything, either. When surrounded by people who seemed convinced that Steve would hide away from his phone and not know how to use a washing machine, someone heedlessly making Pilates jokes was a relief.

"I guess if anyone could use some investment, it would be Detroit," Steve said.

"I'll be headed out to Malibu from there," Tony continued. "So you can end your road-trip crashing at my place. What about you? What've you got planned?"

Steve sighed, glancing over at his tablet. The screen was currently dark, but if Steve flicked it on, he would find himself reading all about Bucky's sisters, all over again.

"I found the last descendent of Bucky's family," Steve said. "So I'm going to go visit tomorrow."

"Sounds...maudlin," Tony said, and Steve could easily imagine the distasteful wrinkle of his nose at that.

"Probably," Steve said. "But I just...I have to, if only to give myself closure."

"Is that what you're expecting?" Tony asked. There was the sound of clinking metal in the background, followed by one of the bot's whirring and chirping.

"I think so," Steve said. "I mean...probably I'll tell him some stories, get some photographs, and that will be that."

"'Him'?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "Just one survivor left, one of Bucky's sister's grandson. He's fifteen."

"His mother?"

"Dead," Steve said bluntly, setting down his pencil to stare sightlessly at the muted television, which was showing some local news-story about a high school baseball game. "I missed her by a few years."

"I'm sorry," Tony said. Despite it being said dismissively and in passing, Steve believed him when he said it - in part because the amount of sincerity was limited. It was limited because it was real. Tony was not one for white lies to make people feel better.

"It's fine," Steve said. "I'll meet the kid - teenage boys like war stories, right? Bucky and his sisters were all packrats, so there might be some pictures or something lurking around there somewhere, who knows." With a shrug that Tony couldn't see, he concluded, "It'll probably be a nice but awkward visit, after which we'll never have to see each other again."

"Anything in particular you're hoping to find?" Tony asked.

Steve sighed. "I just...I want to know that..." Steve took a deep breath. "Everything Bucky did, it was for the people he loved. Me, his ma, his sisters...I want to know that Bucky did good by his sisters, that they lived well after the war and after losing us. Anything else will be a pleasant surprise, but as long as I get to check in on them on Bucky's behalf, I'll call it a success."

"And after that?" Tony asked.

"Down to Fresno to meet Jim's family and get those pictures," Steve said. The Moritas had already contacted Steve - through SHIELD - and had a shoebox of wartime photos Jim'd taken and left to them.

"As soon as you get to my place, we'll digitize them all," Tony said.

"I like having the physical pictures," Steve began.

"I believe you," Tony said. "Nah, this isn't to replace them, just keep them safe. Once they're digitized, they can be backed up online and sent instantly around the world. No matter what happens to the physical copies, there will be digital copies waiting for you, somewhere."

Steve blinked at the TV, then smiled.

"Thank you," he said. "I appreciate it."

Somewhere in Tony's lab, Steve heard JARVIS speaking, then Tony sighing.

"Guess I gotta go to bed, so I can be presentable for tomorrow," Tony grumbled. "See you in about three weeks?"

"It's a date," Steve said, and tried not to choke as he ended the call.

Just because he missed his date with Peggy didn't mean all his social engagements from here on out were useless.

He'd spend an awkward day in Beacon Hills tomorrow, swing by Fresno, and probably be able to intercept Tony on his way to the mansion in Malibu.

Really, what else could happen?

~*~


	4. He'd Be Perfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expansion of my response to the "POV" prompt from [this meme](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/145632843635/no-excuses-writing-meme-askbox-version) (which I'm still taking prompts on).

~*~

Chris was still pacing in front of the fireplace by the time Allison went to bed, and Victoria was on her second cup of coffee.

Kate sighed.

"Look, she probably wasn't even going to use it," Kate said, still feeling full from the rather hilarious dinner. "It's a girl thing, keeping one on hand just in case, whether you are going to have sex or not."

"But it means she's thinking about it!" Chris hissed.

"Do you want me to remind you of the crap we got up to when we were her age?" Kate asked. Victoria snorted, and Chris growled but turned away, going back to his pacing.

"Well, he seems nice enough," Victoria said, sipping at her tea. "Maybe a bit _too_ nice."

Kate smiled, finally finding an in for the idea she'd gotten during the dinner.

"Well...we might be able to fix that," she said.

Chris and Victoria both frowned at her.

"What are you talking about?" Chris asked.

"Allison's going to start training soon," Kate said. "And you know how much easier it is with a partner. Since she doesn't have a brother-"

"No!" Chris cried out, looking scandalized. "You can't seriously-"

"Oh, come on, he's perfect!" Kate cried out. "Look, first of all, he's studying animal science, already-"

"Under Deaton," Chris pointed out. "For all we know-"

"If Deaton were training him to be a Druid, do you really think Scott would even be talking to an Argent?" Kate said, waving away his concerns. "No, listen, Scott's already studying animal science. That will be useful for studying werewolves and everything else we deal with. And he's already trained to respect women, so we don't have to break him into it."

"She has a point," Victoria said, in that neutral voice she used when she was waiting for Chris and Kate to argue themselves out before she stepped in.

"Think about it," Kate said. "He's a teenage boy, and out of a whole team of actual superheros, he idolized not just one of the normal humans on the team, but the female human."

Chris rolled his eyes. "Gee, I wonder why-"

"You were watching him, it wasn't because he thought the Black Widow's hot," Kate said. "A whole team of freaks and he likes the human woman. He'll never pick a werewolf over his Huntress! He's not going to be one of those fantasy nerds who thinks werewolves are 'cool' because of their stupid books and movies. And he didn't just idolize the Black Widow, he tried to emulate her. So he's a self-starter!"

"Useful," Victoria quipped.

"Also," Kate continued. "When most guys find out a girl is better than them at something, they get upset or try to dismiss it. He not only admired her when she said she'd been doing gymnastics for so long, he not only thought it was great, but his first reaction was to ask her to help him with something he'd been struggling with. He's not going to be a show-off in training, he'll ask her for help and be a better Hunter for it. Not to mention this means he's already learning gymnastics. Think of how useful that will be!"

"Really?" Chris demanded of her incredulously, stopping in his pacing to face her. He crossed his arms in frustration.

"Really," Kate said. "Respect for women, self-starter, already learning things useful in Hunting, favoring a human over non-humans... He's perfect!" Kate grabbed at Chris's hands to uncross his arms.

"He also likes cute animals," Victoria countered. "His animal sympathizing getting in the way of him eliminating threats."

"One full-moon in sight of the monsters would fix that," Kate answered. "Besides, veterinarians have to put down animals for all sorts of reasons, all the time. If he doesn't learn how to put practicality over sentiment with us, his job will do it for him."

"I am not going to encourage the two of them to spend even _more_ time together!" Chris grumbled.

Kate's smile bloomed. "But you _do_ agree that he'd be a perfect candidate?"

Chris scowled and refused to answer, turning back to his pacing.

Victoria smiled. "I'll withhold judgment for now," she said. "But Chris - she does have a point. We're already starting Allison so late as it is. Having a training partner who is already her age, already going to school with her, and who she already likes? This can turn out very well." With a sly smile, she added, "And if Scott is her training partner, that means you'll be there to keep an eye on them for the majority of the time they're together."

He stopped in his place, side and back turned to the fire as he took Victoria's words in.

"Not to mention," Victoria continued. "All it would take is a few lessons about breaking down and hiding bodies for Scott to learn to respect any rules we set out."

Kate smirked. Victoria was including Allison in that 'we', even if that hadn't occurred to Chris, yet.

"...I'm not agreeing to anything," he said, directing his ire to both Victoria and Kate. "But when we start Allison's training, we'll take a look at Scott, too." Without bothering to lower his voice, he grumbled, "Hopefully, she'll have broken up with him by then and this will all be a moot point, anyway."

"They were already planning matching Halloween costumes," Victoria pointed out, dubious and amused in equal measures. "If they decide to go out as 'gender-swapped' Black Widow and Hawkeye, they'll be able to carry around weapons on one of the most dangerous nights of the year without anyone looking twice at them."

"Oh, Vic, I'm pretty sure they'd get more than second looks if Scott wanders around in a leather catsuit," Kate said. Mostly to make Chris' eye twitch, which it did. Victoria laughed at the mental image and didn't deny it, which presumably was only making Chris' impending aneurism worse.

"This is gonna be great," Kate said, already formulating training plans for two in her head.

"Somehow, I doubt it," Chris muttered.

"Oh come on," Kate asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the mantle over the fire place. "What's the worst that could happen?"

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally meant to get this out yesterday, as it was my birthday and I always try to update things on my birthday. Oh, well - better late than never.


	5. Blood as Red as Mud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update, reposting (a little spruced up) from [here on Tumblr](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/150281886170/hi-nyx-so-long-time-fan-of-your-winter-wolves).

> _Hi Nyx! So long time fan of your Winter Wolves. Love the interaction between Stiles & Cap, ESPECIALLY the part with the inhaler. So I wanted to share this with you. Since I was little, I loved to draw and paint. One thing on my paper could be 15 shades of blue. My dad loves me works, but I started drawing black and white stuff for him because of his colorblindness. Recently, we got him those new glasses that corrects colorblindness. And it's like he was seeing drawings for the 1st time. I cried._
> 
> _So rereading Winter Wolves, I started to cry again. Because STEVE ROGERS WAS COLOR BLIND TOO. And the thought him coming out of the pod to see an entire spectrum of color that wasn’t there before just kinda breaks my heart. And now it can be fixed with a pair of (admittedly expensive) glasses. So when I was reading, I just kept thinking ‘omg, Steve, STEVE! Another one of your issues that could now be fixed’. Technology is amazing. What are your thoughts?_

Steve was skimming the science section of his morning newsfeed when he first saw the little news article about them. Thinking they were a little too good to be true, he called Stiles up and blurted out, “Are these real?”

“Are what real?” Stiles asked.

“Glasses for color-blindness?”

“Uh…” Steve heard the sound of Stiles clacking at his keyboard and clicking his mouse. “Yup, they’re real. Not widely known just yet, and not available for all color-blindness types just yet, but they’re real."

"...huh," Steve said, dropping his fork onto his plate.

"People with color-blindness have all the cones and rods - uh, the color-seeing bits in their eyes?" Stiles continued explaining. "But they’re just sensitive to the wrong wavelengths and activating when they shouldn’t. So these glasses filter out the weird wavelengths in the middle so the cones activate only when they’re supposed to.”

Steve swallowed, staring into his almost-empty breakfast plate.

“…wait,” Stiles said. “You were color-blind, right?”

Steve nodded, then remembered he was on the phone. “Yeah, I was.” He swallowed. “Made art school a nightmare for me.” He snorted, remembering his stunned walks through his old streets with his new eyes. “I had no idea that this was what people saw all the time. Things made a lot more sense, now. Especially Bucky.”

“Bucky?” Stiles asked. “How did he make more sense just because you could see him more?”

“It wasn’t that I could see him more, it was that I could see what he saw more,” Steve said. “I can see scrapes and bruises and blood, somewhat, but not - not the way I do now, or most people in general do. They’re not particularly vivid, when you can’t see red. So, y'know, I’d get into all sorts of fights, I’d get beat up and I’d come home bleeding…I could never understand why anyone would worry just from taking one look at me.”

“You were red-green color-blind?” Stiles said.

“Yeah,” Steve said, setting down his fork to continue scrolling his way through the science article. “I was in a set accident on one of the USO shows. I got banged up enough that the bruises and scrapes were still there when I got to the dressing room for a clean costume, and this was the first time I’d really bled a lot since Rebirth. I saw myself in a mirror, and I realized that this was what my ma and Bucky and his ma and sisters saw whenever I got into a fight or got hurt.”

“And suddenly, it made a lot more sense?”

Steve snorted. “Yup. Bucky used to make fun of me for it all the time, once I mentioned this to him. Every time he’d get hurt in the field and I so much as pointed it out, he’d shove it in my face yelling, 'See? _See? See what I mean?_ ’. The Howlies used to crack up every time, and asked me if I could see what my blushing looked like when I was colorblind.”

Stiles laughed. “Could you?”

“A little bit, but not much,” Steve answered.

“Probably just as well you couldn’t get a date until after Rebirth,” Stiles said. “Imagine all the lipstick that would’ve been wasted on you.”

Steve laughed so hard, his stomach hurt. “Y'know, that sounds like something Bucky would say.”


	6. In a Window Back Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny little dialogue piece that'll accompany a future chapter of Talking Cure. Since it's for a scene/story that hasn't been published yet, be ware of spoilers (though I tried to minimize them as much as possible in this segment).

Erica draped herself over Isaac's lap in the back seat of the Camaro, while Boyd slid into the passenger seat neatly.

"Scott and Stiles will care more about keeping everyone else safe than they will about the kanima," Derek concluded, as he took off for the rave. "They want to keep things quiet, and they will do anything to make sure no else gets hurt in the crossfire."

"Unless it's Harley," Erica muttered under her breath. Even admid the sound of the Camaro's engine, they all heard her.

Derek frowned, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. "Who-"

"If Harley is there," Isaac is declared. "I'll let Stiles kill her, and help him hide the body."

"Or just hide it for him," Erica drawled. "You still have that job at the graveyard, don't you?"

Boyd doubled-over in badly suppressed laughter, almost hitting his head against the dashboard.

Derek glared until Erica relented, explaining, "Stiles' uncle is in the military, and a while back went missing in Iraq or something? Anyway, Harley is a super-hippie who basically implied that soliders in the Middle East deserve what they get. You can imagine how the Blue Star nephew and-" She jerked her thumb at Isaac. "-the Gold Star brother took that. Isaac nearly shifted in class. Stiles _would've_ shifted if he were a werewolf, he was that pissed."

As Derek blinked in surprise and took a sharp turn towards 'downtown', Boyd chimed in, "Though I don't think Stiles is technically a blue-star family." Everyone looked at him, and he added, "You're only Blue Star if your family is in the U.S. military. But Stiles said his uncle was working for 'an international team', though he wouldn't say what it was-"

"SHIELD," Derek answered.

The three teenagers blinked at him in nearly perfect unison, silently in their askance.

"...a few months ago," Derek explained quietly. "When I was fighting...the last alpha. The fight got out of hand, the cops were called, and Stiles and I couldn't get out of there before they showed up. So the cops were crawling around, and within an hour, there were SHIELD agents around, trying to figure out if someone had targeted Stiles to get to his uncle. His uncle is someone important in national security."

Erica whistled. "SHIELD? The guys who handled the Chitauri invasion?"

Derek snorted, this time. At everyone's looks, he added, "They stopped it in its tracks, but SHIELD didn't handle it very well, afterwards."

Erica and Isaac stared in confusion, but Boyd's face softened. "You were there," he said. "Right? You said you'd been in New York for a few years."

Derek pursed his lips.

"My sister says the Hulk smelled almost as weird as the aliens," Derek answered finally, before wincing at the realization he'd used the present tense to talk about Laura.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "blue star" family member is a relative of someone serving in the US military. A "gold star" family member is the relative of someone who died in the line of duty. The terms originated from banners that families of military personnel would hang in their windows during WWI and WWII, bearing a blue star for every member serving in the war and a gold star for those who died in it.
> 
> (Technically, the terms are only supposed to apply to parents, spouses, and children, but since this is a series about chosen family, I'm expanding that convention. :P)


	7. Nightmare Fuel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek has a _very_ bad dream after he falls asleep while waiting for Stiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger Warning** for sexual assault/abuse, blanket Kate warning, and general graphic violence.
> 
> This takes place toward the end of Chapter 3 of Talking Cure, when Derek is lurking/waiting in Stiles' room. >:)

The Beacon Hills High School’s basketball gym was two fast songs away from turning into a sauna, despite the doors opening to the winter chill. If it weren’t for Kate’s perfume on the collar of his shirt, Derek was sure he’d be gagging from the smell of that many sweaty bodies packed together. Despite the swim team worsening the already-terrible punch by spiking it, every sip of it was a reprieve.

Derek’s suit fit him a little too tight, making it feel even worse. He worked out all the time, these days — between quitting the basketball team and his family avoiding him and his blue eyes, he didn’t have much else to do. He hadn’t realized just how _much_ he’d been working out until he pulled on his old suit just a few hours before.

He would have to ask Mom to get him a new one.

Except right then, over by the senior cluster, Laura fell to the ground screaming, her mess of sapphire chiffon pooling around her. She seemed to almost rise out of all the winter-colored balloons that littered the floor because the planning committee forgot to order helium again.

The student body continued to dance around her like nothing was happening. All the girls’ high heels clacking against the gym’s hardwood floor drowned out the choked sound of her muffled sobbing.

One of her friends asked her if she was all right, and kept asking, over and over and over and over again like a song on loop, as everyone else in the gym ignored her, and the lights from the disco ball started to flicker like flames.

Laura looked up, the the red of an alpha burning out the gold of her eyes.

He smelled ash and burning wood, gasoline and chemicals and Kate’s perfume, and the plastic martini cup shattered in his grip. He didn’t even notice the plastic shards slicing into his hand or the crappy punch making the brief wounds sting. Turning on his heel, Derek turned his back on his sister as he followed the toxic smell, away from the Winter Formal. Slamming through the double doors, the sound of that 90’s throwback faded behind him as he followed that intoxicating scent through the halls.

Kate was waiting for him in the chemistry classroom. Derek shut the door behind him, which did nothing to block out the trashy pop music coming from the dance.

“Hey, Handsome,” she greeted him.

She seemed to gleam in her red substitute-teacher chaperone dress, the one that was acceptable for a school dance until she peeled off her sweater to reveal the lack of sleeves and plunging neckline that Derek had tugged down with his teeth in the chemistry supply closet.

He hadn’t gone home yet, but he already knew his family was dead.

“Why?” he pleaded.

She held up the cupcake with the 1 and 6 candles that had lit up the entire closet when she’d given it to him, drowning him in the scent of cake frosting. Instead of answering him, she crooned, “Happy birthday, Derek,” like she had before she’d gone down on him the day he turned sixteen. Her heartbeat remained completely steady, as if she actually meant it.

Derek tried to move forward, to beg for answers, to do anything other than follow the force of her hand when she pushed against his chest. He fell into the hardened wood of the teacher’s chair. She straddled him, the metal divots digging into his back even through the tux. Wrapping her free hand around the back of his head, she pressed her lips to his, her hips moving down in a sickeningly sensual motion that had his dick hardening right up against her thigh.

He was still hard when she pulled away. The red dress was no longer filled with Kate’s living body, but Paige’s dead one. His nose was saturated by scent of the poisoned blood staining the red silk black. Her eyes burned gold, just like the flames crackling atop the birthday candles.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his voice echoing around the burnt out remains of his bedroom that they were in, ashen wood collapsing in the corner.

“Your pretty blue eyes,” Paige's dead body said, her voice and Kate’s voice mingling as her knees dug into the crumbling sheets of his bed, beneath them. She still smelled of Kate’s perfume — and kindling. She held up the cupcake to his mouth and Derek took a bite, chewing what felt like solid wood.

“Is it good?” she asked.

Crying, Derek nodded.

He swallowed the bite of birthday treat. “Why?” he asked again.

Instead of answering, she threw down the cupcake, sending the whole room ablaze in one blow.

He threw his arms up, the body in his lap collapsing with the house around him.

When he dug himself out, he was standing in Manhattan, staring up at the monsters coming out of the hole in the sky. The sky through the hole was dark, darker than the night sky on a new moon, but he caught glimpses of stars and monsters and armies _waiting_ -

Mouth still tasting of the cold coffee he’d kept forgetting about throughout his morning meetings, Derek started running, yanking out his phone and dialing, screaming, “Laura? Laura!”

_“Hi, you’ve reached Laura Hale,”_ her voicemail answered. _“I’m sorry I missed your call, but please leave your name, contact information, and-”_

The phone cracked under the force of Derek hanging up as he ran. His ears rang with the sounds of people screaming, cars exploding, and aliens screeching — but no sister, no _alpha_.

He couldn’t reach her, his office building felt as far away as home, and in the windows he ran past, he wasn’t an adult in his usual office attire, but still a teenager in a singed and black-stained tux, eyes burning a blue he refused to flash in broad daylight.

The city dimmed as the sky filled up with more and more monsters, more _aliens_ , grey-skinned creatures on weird flying sleds and those gigantic, armored, flying whale things. They swarmed and descended, blocking out the sun. Their unearthly screeches pierced Derek’s ears, along with all the screaming people around him.

In the distance, he heard another roar — but not from any of the aliens, no, from the Hulk, Derek didn’t see but he knew, he knew it was the Hulk now. The aliens roared back as he heard the sound of crashing metal and alien lasers behind him, getting closer and closer and closer as he ran.

One of the aliens landed right in his path, their laser-like weapon burning a hole through some crying hipster kid and almost hitting Derek. Derek couldn’t help but scream, his scream rising into a roar of his own in the emptying street, but the alien didn’t seem particularly concerned.

Not that Derek could tell. It’s not like the alien had a heartbeat, and he didn’t know what to make of the rhythms he was hearing from it.

All he knew was that those rhythms _stopped_ when he ripped its throat out, claws ripping through skin as tough as old leather, even though it felt like overripe fruit. (And almost smelled like it, too, a scent Derek couldn’t even begin to describe but reminded him of jet fuel and rotten plants and the air just before lightning struck, all at once, yet smelled like none of those particularly, how, _how_ , _HOW_ -)

The sidewalk flickered like a burning house as cars continued to catch fire, to explode, as the air filled with flames and smoke and those laser blasts. He turned around and ran into his building, saw people screaming and running from the chaos.

“The stairs!” the terrified security guard had the presence of mind to insist on. Everyone ran into the stairwell, right as some aliens burst into the lobby.

Derek was the last one in, bolting the door and holding it shut with all his might.

“Run!” he yelled up at everyone. The cold metal dug into his skin as the aliens started throwing their weight towards the door. “ _RUN!_ ”

It was just as the last office workers disappeared up the stairs that the door finally burst open, sending Derek careening into the wall. There were two more aliens there. Derek dodge their blasts as he kicked the one shooting at him into its partner. He ran through the door beside him, into his office that was halfway up the Chrysler Building.

The first thing he saw was their new receptionist’s body. The smell of her blood mixed with the scent of the fancy lotion they’d given to her as a welcome gift, the bottle burst open and plastic melting into her ridiculous collection of sticky notes.

Before he could look around, the window burst in, glass shards flying everywhere as an alien jumped into the office, pulled that staff thing off its back, and started shooting. It was fast enough that even Derek barely saw it coming. He didn’t even realize he’d been shot until he fell to his knees, his synthetic shirt fibers melting into his skin around the wounds burned into his belly.

Derek looked up in time to see the receptionist’s dead eyes when the alien stabbed her through, blood splattering all over the computer screen still open on the spreadsheet they’d been griping about that morning.

The alien pulled its weapon out of her and raised it, aimed it right at Derek’s head, and only paused to look up as the air, the windows, the entire building started crackling with lightning.

The alien turned around, screeching in fury to see a lightning bolt travel from their own building straight at the hole the sky, clogging it up with hurt, armored, flying whale things. Derek stumbled towards it, grasping onto a desk slippery with lotion and blood to leverage himself up.

He ran forward with an agonized yell, tackling the alien right back out the goddamn window and watching it fall hundreds of feet to the ground to splat right next to a red-headed woman with a stolen alien weapon and a guy dressed up like Captain America. Derek only backed away from the window when he saw red-and-gold armor flying down the street, a flying whale monster thing chasing after it.

Hearing the whimpers and the crying behind him, he turned around. Several colleagues were wounded and he smelled multiple sources of blood and burning skin. Coworkers screamed in pain but moved all the same, desperate to give each other first aid.

Everyone cried as they were stared at by the dead eyes of the new receptionist. The girl had been so happy to get a full time job only two years out of college, and she’d brought everyone cookies to thank them for the lotion and picked out special sticky notes for every person in the office, and now she was dead and those sticky notes were all covered in her blood.

“Thank you,” a bleeding mail clerk whimpered, staring out the window Derek had just tackled the alien out of.

Derek didn’t answer, stumbling past the front desk, through the lobby, desperate to get out, get to his sister, get to the rest of coworkers, just get somewhere as he threw himself through the lobby door.

Crashing through the door, he burst into the ashen shell of the living room of his childhood home.

His cotton tee-shirt and leather jacket seemed to tighten around him like a snake as he watched Laura slowly turn on the spot by the couch. She narrowed her eyes at the burnt out walls, degraded from years of exposure and neglect.

Her heartbeat and breathing rose with her frustration. She was vibrant and active and alive, completely out of place in this mausoleum.

“Well, we definitely can’t stay here,” she said with a rueful headshake. “How about you go find a nice hotel room? You have a knack for getting a good deal on them.” She held up the report that the mysterious adviser of hers sent her, thumb covering half the picture of the dead deer with the revenge spiral carved into its side. “I’ll go out and see if I can find any leads on this.”

“NO!” he screamed. “You’re gonna die, Laura, _no_!”

But she didn’t hear him. She turned and strode out the remains of their front door, heartbeat and breaths fading away from his hearing for the last time.

He ran after her, running and running and _running_ until he felt a hole in his heart and in his head where his alpha, his sister, the last of his family was supposed to be.

He collapsed by the Camaro outside, damp forest dirt soaking through his jeans and nose, when he felt Laura’s life and spark fade away. In the murky reflection of the car door, he flashed his eyes, frowning in confusion when they remained blue instead of turning rightful red.

That didn’t make any sense. He looked over to see the top half of his sister’s body, naked, a Chitauri standing over her with the Argent broadsword in its hand dripping blood. He gagged as the smell of her internal organs and blood and innards overpowered his nose. The alien roared, and Derek hunched over, clamping his hands over his ears as he tried to block out the frequencies that he wasn’t even sure existed on Earth.

He looked back up when the echos ended, but the Chitauri was gone, the sword falling into the soft ground on the other side of Laura. Derek pushed himself up, first one leg, then the other, crouching for a moment until he stood upright.

When he reached Laura’s side, it wasn’t a sword by her body, but a shovel.

Derek picked it up and started digging.

The metal struck and sunk into the earth like a blade into flesh. Derek yanked the earth up, off to the side, the mulch and dirt smells not making a dent in the smell of Laura’s innards as he clawed his way towards this pathetic semblance of a grave for her. He dug in time with his labored breathing, the slide of metal through mud marking his every inhale, the thud of loosened dirt raining on the ground above him marking his every exhale. The dead, gritty taste of the dirt that landed in his mouth didn’t slow him down, nothing did, not until he got down six feet and found the rope waiting for him.

The coarse fibers and the wolfsbane burned his hands, but Derek didn’t get gloves. He eased Laura’s body — what he had left of it — into the grave, filled it back up, and put the wolfsbane rope over the ground, taking care to make the spiral as perfect and symmetrical as possible. He couldn’t manage more than this pathetic mimicry of a grave for her, but he would damn well do his best, and do this right.

He kept laying down the rope and measuring and laying down more, until he heard young voices approaching and smelled something — impossible.

He looked up to see two kids, a boy with a buzzcut and a knock-off Captain America shirt, another with floppy hair and sincere eyes and smelling like potential, like almost-wolf, like beta-to-be. But Laura was dead and he wasn’t the alpha and humans didn’t become alphas when they killed-

-which meant she wasn’t killed by a human, no, she was killed by a wolf, some interloper who took what was _theirs_ , what was _his_ , and the first thing they did was create a new wolf, someone who should not be here, who had no right to be here, to exist, who-

“Hey, have you seen my inhaler?” the floppy-haired kid asked.

“This is private property!” he yelled, even as he reached into his pocket.

He pulled out the inhaler, but instead of Scott’s name, it read _Derek Hale_ on the prescription label.

Derek threw it at them, anyway. Scott caught it, and his eyes lit up.

“Thanks!” he said.

“C’mon, dude,” Stiles said. Except instead of leading Scott away, they kept walking, further and further, past the grave, past the Chitauri, past Derek, and into the house.

Goddamnit, he and Laura had smelled right away that people — kids — had been in and out of the ruins of their home, treating it like a common hideaway with no regard for who used to live there. People walked into this hurt and defenseless home, people who never would’ve dared come near it once upon a time, and these two kids — like dozens before them — just ignored him and walked in anyway like it was theirs.

They didn’t even notice the Chitauri standing on the other side of what used to be the most bountiful home vegetable garden in Beacon Hills, all of his great-aunt’s stupid prize ribbons burned away into ash along with her.

While the boys disappeared into the remains of Derek’s home, the Chitauri shifted its shape, changed like Derek was supposed to but never could. As it changed, it started roaring, that unearthly sound shifting by decibels into the roar of the alpha it turned into, the alpha that killed Laura, that Turned Scott, that stole his pack and the last of his family.

Derek tried to fight it off, but he’d never even stood a chance against Hunters, aliens, or other betas. He certainly didn’t stand a chance against this monster before him. The claws went right through almost as neatly as an alien laser.

The sound of claws sinking into his gut, the tearing of his organs and the gurgling of his blood, hit him before the pain did. The feeling of being lifted into the air, of hard claw and cold air over his insides, hit him before the pain did. The sight of his own high school hit him before the pain did.

The pain hit him at the same time as he hit the parking lot. The asphalt dug into his cheek, a white line painted on the ground seeming to point right from his wounded stomach to the main entrance of the school. The smell of the faded rubber of a thousand tires and the coppery tang of his own blood drowned out all other scents in his nose, and the blood bubbling over his tongue didn’t help.

His head still rang with the impact as he watched a bunch of teenagers flee into the school, Jackson and Lydia and Stiles and…and himself, himself as a golden-eyed teenager, in Scott’s clothes, holding Allison’s hand.

Derek watched as he kissed Allison in reassurance, but when he pulled away, her face had been replaced with Kate’s.

“Come on, Handsome,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him inside, leaving nothing but whiffs of Kate’s perfume in their wake.

Derek couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything except watch in silence and try not to die as the alpha stalked away, already losing interest in him, as if its own beta, as if the last Hale, didn’t matter.

“What do we do?” he heard, and at least the kids were safe. For now, anyway, if Allison’s hysterics were anything to go by. “If the cops won’t come-”

“Then we’ll fight back,” Stiles said, that idiot. Derek braced himself, pressed his hands into the rough ground of the parking lot and push himself up, except it didn’t work, he didn’t have the strength, he wasn’t even sure if his hands moved at all or if he just imagined it.

But at least he could turn his head, and squinting, he was pretty sure he saw the kids in the chemistry classroom, Lydia pulling bottles left and right and pouring things together. Derek turned his head even further, trying to look for the alpha. Instead, he saw Stiles’ stupid, ancient jeep, with the hood dented in and what looked like a part ripped from out of the engine. He winced when he heard the sound of glass crashing in the distance, followed by the clunk of metal landing on cafeteria linoleum.

“Here,” he heard Allison said. “Lydia’s self-igniting Molotov. Be careful, okay?”

When Derek looked back, Allison was wearing Kate’s bright red ‘chaperone’ dress from the dance, without even the sweater to at least pretend to have public school decency. Scott wore Derek’s own tux, stained with black blood.

“I will be,” he promised, as if he could stand any kind of chance against the alpha that just skewered Derek. Shivering, he pushed himself up, because Scott was going to get himself killed, get them all killed if he went alone. The white parking spot lines on the ground were splattered with bright red when he glanced down.

When he looked back up, it was to see Allison handing Scott the cupcake, with the 1 and 6 candles on it. Scott took it, and the tiny little flames lit up with the roar of a house engulfed in flames. He could taste the oversweet frosting as Scott turned and walked out the door, straight to what was sure to be his death.

Despite having seen the damage done to Stiles’ ancient jeep, he heard the engine ch- _ch-chHUG_ to life, and the cacophonous roar as it started to move. But when he turned around, it wasn’t a stupid teenager in a jeep coming towards him, it was the alpha, riding one of those Chitauri sleds as it flew straight towards Derek, dead on with the sound of the jeep ringing in his ears-

-and chugging down the street in the distance as Derek woke up, falling right out of Stiles’ bed and onto his floor.

With the memory of smoke and blood and alien ichor in his nose, Derek heaved as he took in his surroundings, focused on the here and now.

Stiles’ bedroom was brightly lit. The bed had been unmade when Derek had snuck in a few hours before, and it was even further messed up now. Posters covered the walls, and a small bookshelf lurked in the corner, filled with a disorganized mess of books and collectibles and other teenage nonsense.

This room looked like Derek’s used to, before the fire.

The only real difference were all the books and papers strewn about on supernatural lore, on myths and legends and stupid vampire movies. Stiles clearly had no idea which ones were reliable and which ones were total bullshit, and instead of doing the smart thing and asking anybody — like Derek — he was taking it all as equally potential fact.

He winced as he saw a print-out from Harry Potter, and wondered if it was better or worse than Stiles trying to get information from Twilight.

Laura’d had a stupid Team Edward tee-shirt, once. It was yet another thing she’d lost to the fire.

The room was saturated with the smell of Stiles, of his sweat, of his body, of his spunk, with old chips and older laundry rounding out the scent.

He’d only been asleep for about four hours, if that, but his mouth tasted sour, anyway. Well, four hours was still better than nothing, especially four hours in a real bed. He’d tried to sleep in a hotel after Laura died, and he’d spent the entire night jerking awake at every tiny sound, every noise that so much as hinted at a Hunter.

Once he realized Hunters would be the least of his problems, he stopped trying. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep somewhere that he was easily found. Even if it was less comfortable, sleeping in his car was the safest option in town, right now.

He pressed his hand down into old carpet — not high school linoleum, not New York asphalt, not muddy forest ground, but carpet infused with Stiles’ scent, and smelling of the Sheriff and Scott and a hundred cleaned up messes and a thousand vacuumings — and dug in. He only barely kept his claws in as he rested his cheek on the floor.

Until he remembered what woke him up in the first place. That was Stiles’ jeep that’d come down the street, and had just pulled into the house’s driveway.

He peeled himself up off the homely carpet as he listened to the doors opening and closing downstairs. With a grunt of frustration, he moved towards the bookshelf, placing himself behind the door to the room.

Stiles’ feet pounded up the stairs, across the little hall, and into his room, looking far too excited for the amount of danger he was in. He didn’t even notice anyone else in the room, didn’t turn around at all as he dumped his backpack where Derek had been laying a few moments before and made a beeline for his computer.

“Hey, Stiles!” the Sheriff called, as he walked up the stairs.

“Yo, Da-” Stiles heartbeat was steady until he turned around and saw Derek there. “Derek?!” he yelped.

He jerked his hand towards the door, baring his teeth but staying silent.

Stiles got the hint, all but throwing himself at his bedroom door to meet his father there, before his dad could come into the room.

Derek nearly rolled his eyes into the back of his head with the Stilinskis’ awkward conversation and the Sheriff’s promise to come to Stiles’ game tonight.

Seriously, what the hell was with these kids’ obsession with lacrosse?

As soon as the Sheriff walked away and Stiles came into the room, closing the door behind him, Derek pounced, pressing Stiles against the door before he got any ideas to betray Derek.

"If you say one word-"

"What, you mean like, 'Hey, Dad, Derek Hale's in my room, bring your gun'?"

Derek narrowed his eyes. Despite Stiles’ cocky voice, he still stank of fear.

"Yeah, that's right,” Stiles continued anyway. “If I'm harboring your fugitive ass, it's my house, my rules, buddy."

Derek eased back, narrowing his eyes at Stiles’ condescending little chest pat.

“I’m not a fugitive,” he pointed out. With a smirk, he added, “Thanks to you, blaming the attack on the school on a wild animal instead of me.”

“Don’t get too cheerful about it,” Stiles said, with a condescending smirk of his own. “I only did because I was pretty sure you were still alive. I would’ve been perfectly fine blaming you if you were dead.”

Derek fought down the strong urge to roll his eyes as Stiles started to move away, condescension still on his face.

At least the boy stilled flinched when Derek leaned forward.

It was pathetic, especially after lurking — and falling asleep — in the boy’s bedroom for half the day. But right now, he’d take his tiny victories where he could get them.

“Did Scott get his hands on that necklace?” Derek asked. “Allison’s necklace?”

"No, he's still working on it,” Stiles said, because of course. Derek’s life and his sister’s legacy were resting in the hands of a lovestuck teenager and _this idiot_. “But there's something else we can try.”

Stiles dropped into his chair at the desk, spinning it around to face Derek.

Derek nodded, listening.

“The night we were trapped at the school, Scott sent Allison a text telling her to meet him there."

Now Derek narrowed his eyes. "So?"

"So,” Stiles pointed at Derek. “That wasn't Scott."

It only took a moment for Derek to figure it out. If it wasn’t Scott who sent her that message, then the only other person who could’ve gotten them all there, who could’ve lured her there, was the alpha.

"So can you find out who sent it?" Derek demanded.

Stiles turned away, facing his computer.

"No,” he said, booting it up. “But I think I know somebody who can..."

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Good or bad, compliments or criticism, I love to hear it all. It lets me know what to keep doing, and what I should try to change or improve. ^_^ If there are any specific scenes and/or POV's you would like to see, let me know!
> 
> And if you haven't already, come check out my [Frost Bite Author Commentary](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6155278). :)


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